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Ernest Pintoff, 70, Director Who Won an Oscar for Animated Film

Ernest Pintoff, a filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 1963 for ''The Critic,'' a short animated satire about modern art, died Jan. 12 at a hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 70 and lived in Hollywood.

The cause was complications from a stroke, his family said.

''The Critic,'' a three-minute film written and narrated by a young Mel Brooks, followed a man through an art gallery as he commented, unimpressed, on a series of abstract paintings. It was one of a number of animated shorts Mr. Pintoff made in the late 1950's and early 1960's, including ''The Violinist,'' narrated by Carl Reiner, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1959.

He was given the Winsor McCay Award in 1998 from Asifa, an international society of animators, for his lifetime contribution to animation.

After ''The Critic'' he turned to film and television. He directed the films ''Harvey Middleman, Fireman'' in 1965; ''Dynamite Chicken,'' a compendium of comedy skits with appearances by Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen and other stars, in 1971; and ''St. Helens,'' a dramatization of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

His television credits include installments of NBC's ''Experiment in Television'' in the late 1960's that used quick-cut, pastiche techniques in documentaries about Marshall McLuhan and Sholem Aleichem. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, Mr. Pintoff directed television shows, including episodes of ''Kojak,'' ''Falcon Crest'' and ''MacGyver.''

Mr. Pintoff taught directing at the School of Visual Arts, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and elsewhere. After a stroke in 1983 he wrote a number of books, including animation textbooks, a memoir called ''Bolt From the Blue'' and a novel, ''Zachary.''

He is survived by his wife, Caroline; a son, Jonathan, of Los Angeles; a daughter, Gabrielle Stornaiuolo of San Francisco; and three grandsons.